I have seen much of the poor. I could tell strange, pathetic histories of the slums, the mines, the factories: of the workhouses and the workhouse school, and the police-courts where the poor are unfairly tried and unjustly punished. Let me dip back into some of my past work, and show a few pictures. Here is a rough sketch of the women in the East End slums: WOMEN IN THE METROPOLIS OF THE WORLD "Have you any reverence for womanhood? Are you men? If you come here and look upon these women, you shall feel a burning scorn for the blazoned lies of English chivalry and English piety and English Art. "Drudging here in these vile stews day after day, night after night; always with the wolf on the poor doorstep gnashing his fangs for the clinging brood; always with the black future, like an ominous cloud casting its chill shadow on their anxious hearts; always with the mean walls hemming them in, and the mean tasks wearing them down, and the mean life paralysing their souls; often with brutal husbands to coax and wait upon and fear; often with loafing blackguards--our poor brothers--living on their earnings; with work scarce, with wages low, in vile surroundings, and with faint hopes ever narrowing, these London women face the unrelenting, never-ceasing tide of inglorious war. "If you go there and look upon these women, you will feel suddenly stricken old. Look at their mean and meagre dress, look at their warped figures, their furrowed brows, their dim eyes. In how many cases are the poor features battered, and the poor skins bruised? What culture have these women ever known; what teaching have they had; what graces of life have come to them; what dowry of love, of joy, of fair imagination? As I went amongst them through the mud and rain, as I watched them plying their needles on slop-garments, slaving at the wash-tub, gossiping or bandying foul jests in their balcony cages, drinking at the bars with the men--the thought that rose up most distinctly in my mind was, 'What would these poor creatures do without the gin?' "The gin--that hellish liquor which blurs the hideous picture of life, which stills the gnawing pain, which stays the crushing hand of despair, and blunts the grinding teeth of anguish when the child lies dead of the rickets, or the 'sticks' are sold for the rent, or the sweater has no more work to give, or the husband has beaten and kicked the weary flesh black and blue! What would they do, these women, were it not for the Devil's usury of peace--the gin?